Jonathan Capehart, the celebrated editorial board member and columnist at the Washington Post, was in the vanguard of those hailing Michael Brown as a Black martyr. Brown, you recall, was the unarmed Black teenager who White officer Darren Wilson shot in Ferguson, Missouri last August, triggering months of (often violent) protests under the galvanizing and racially polarizing slogans, “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot” and “Black Lives Matter.”
Well, it seems last week’s DOJ report on this shooting, which damned the Ferguson police department but acquitted Wilson, triggered a conversion of sorts in Capehart. For here, in part, is the public confessional he wrote on March 16 under the born again-like title, “Hands up, don’t shoot was built on a lie”:
We must never allow ourselves to march under the banner of a false narrative on behalf of someone who would otherwise offend our sense of right and wrong. And when we discover that we have, we must acknowledge it, admit our error and keep on marching. That’s what I’ve done here.
The error, of course, was practically deifying a kid who got shot only after trying to wrest away the officer’s gun. To say nothing of the fact that he did this knowing full well that he had just committed a strong-arm burglary at a local convenience store.
Unsurprisingly, on the one hand, Blacks – determined to not let inconvenient truths derail their political activism – are condemning Capehart. While, on the other hand, Whites – eager to cite any fodder that reinforces their racial prejudices – are commending him.
But Capehart should be neither condemned nor commended. He should be questioned. After all, some of “us” were duly decrying the martyrdom of Michael Brown last August, when Capehart and far too many others were championing it. Here, in this respect, is an excerpt from “Why Chastise the Times for Describing Michael Brown as ‘No Angel’? August 26, 2014.
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The New York Times is catching hell for daring to describe Michael Brown, quite accurately, as “no angel”…
But, if/when the Times caves under this ‘Room 101’ backlash, I recommend it corrects those offending words with the two words I dared to use in one of my related commentaries to describe Michael, namely, “menacing thief”…
Frankly, anyone tuning in to his nationally televised memorial service could have been forgiven for thinking that Michael actually belongs in the pantheon of young civil rights martyrs, alongside Emmett Till and James Earl Chaney…
I fear that the lesson most young Black men are learning from this tragedy is that they can resist arrest – so long as they shout the newfangled slogan, ‘hands up, don’t shoot’ while doing so, or after failing to get the upper-hand. Clearly, this will only lead to more of them ending up like Michael…
Instead of doublespeak that would make him a saint, those eulogizing Michael would honor his death far more by admonishing young Black men against the deadly hazards of resisting arrest and defying authority … merely as a misguided badge of honor or rite of passage.
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Which brings me to Martese Johnson, the subject of another Ferguson-like spectacle – this time in my home state of Virginia. Reports are that an intoxicated Martese, a 20-year-old Black student at UVA, became “agitated” after a local bar turned him away on St. Patrick’s Day (for presenting a fake ID, allegedly). Further, that he then became “belligerent” when a White officer tried to question him. This led to Martese getting his head bashed in on the concrete sidewalk when the police took him down to restrain him.
Luckily, he’s not only okay; he’s well enough to experience the surreal honor of participating in campus rallies aimed at making him a Michael Brown-like martyr. Never mind that, had he had cooperated with the police, like any sensible, law-abiding citizen would, he would not have suffered a scratch.
I feel obliged to note here that the facts about how and why Martese ended up face down on the concrete are very much in dispute. It would not surprise me in the least if it turns out that the officers used excessive force. But, if that DOJ report taught us anything, it’s that eyewitness testimony in these cases is often unreliable, even contrived. What is beyond dispute, however, is that even as two officers were trying to restrain him on the ground, Martese could be seen on viral video not only resisting, but also screaming racist profanities at them….
Meanwhile, I fear the untenable message it sends to young Black men to see a sober and suited Martese and his lawyer holding a press conference yesterday. Sure enough, they wanted to telegraph his intent to file a multimillion dollar lawsuit: on the one hand, against the White cops, for injuring him when they tried to restrain him; on the other hand, against his university, for failing to prevent him from drinking underage, getting drunk, and resisting arrest.
Hell, playing this MO holds better odds than playing the Lotto.
Frankly, the only redeeming thing about the Martese protests is that they seem to be confined to UVA’s campus and online hashtags. Of course, the latter means that they’ll be no more disruptive or effective than other hashtag protests like #Kony2012 and #BringBackOurGirls. Remember those?
But at least these protests spare us the indignant way the Brown protests blocked traffic and flash mobbed stores, day in and day out for months, not just in Ferguson but in cities across the country.
In an event, readers of the Washington Post are undoubtedly wondering what editorial position Capehart will champion in this case. In the meantime, even though I appreciate him confessing his sin, the public would be better served if he’d explain why he committed it in the first place.
After all, it should not have taken a DOJ report for a critically acclaimed columnist like him to get that protesters marching back then, under the banner of ‘Hands up, don’t shoot,” were either woefully misguided or willfully ignorant.
Related commentaries:
Michael Brown no angel…
Ferguson…